The Royal Society and the International Association of Academies 1897-1919

Abstract

In the history of the sciences and the arts since the last third of the 19th century two diverging tendencies can be seen. On the one hand the highpoint of nation-state thinking and nationalistic policies was also accompanied by an unmistakable ‘nationalization’ of science and learning. Science, research and learning, which by their very nature should transcend national boundaries, were conceived of as an element in the competitive struggle between the European nations in which ‘jedem wissenschaftlichen Forschungsergebnis ein nationaler Stempel aufgedriickt wird’ and ‘in which science and brains take the place of swords and sinews’. But in contrast to the development towards a ‘wissenschaftlichen Chauvinismus’, about which the German » physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond warned as early as 1878 in a speech at the Berlin Academy, there followed in the wake of increasing international liaison in business and trade more pronounced international co-operation between scientists, researchers and learned societies. It was the second half of the 19th century which experienced the remarkable first flowering of institutional ‘scientific internationalism’ with an increasing incidence of international conferences and the founding of numerous international organizations and conventions. No less than 3000 international scientific functions can be counted between 1840 and 1914. And while only 25 international organizations came into existence between 1870 and 1880, and 40 between 1880 and 1890, 68 were founded between 1890 and 1900 and another 300 before 1910.